The winter coat worn by Elle Fanning’s Aurora is nearly a mirror image of the cape worn by Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent in an early scene during which the fairy’s wings are cruelly taken from her. This inciting event sets Maleficent off into an evil direction, and Sheppard surmised that seeing Aurora in a similar piece might momentarily remind the fairy of her innocent youth.

In place of a traditional tiara, Sheppard designed a series of handmade crowns for Aurora to wear—made from berries, nuts, flowers, and other elements the princess would have found in the forest. Alas, the accessory was deemed “over-the-top” for the character. Also note that the designer created forest-functional footwear for this princess—no high heels here!—soft booties which matched her dresses.

Sheppard matched Aurora’s color palette to Elle Fanning’s personality. “She is incredibly innocent, she has got this very fair complexion, beautiful hair, and never really needs makeup,” the designer explains. “I wanted to give her [character] the same light, like she has got in the real life.”

Sheppard based Aurora’s dresses on late-medieval and Renaissance designs, choosing cotton, thin wools, and multiple layers to provide natural movement for the character as she flits through the forest.

The winter coat worn by Elle Fanning’s Aurora is nearly a mirror image of the cape worn by Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent in an early scene during which the fairy’s wings are cruelly taken from her. This inciting event sets Maleficent off into an evil direction, and Sheppard surmised that seeing Aurora in a similar piece might momentarily remind the fairy of her innocent youth.

In place of a traditional tiara, Sheppard designed a series of handmade crowns for Aurora to wear—made from berries, nuts, flowers, and other elements the princess would have found in the forest. Alas, the accessory was deemed “over-the-top” for the character. Also note that the designer created forest-functional footwear for this princess—no high heels here!—soft booties which matched her dresses.

Sheppard matched Aurora’s color palette to Elle Fanning’s personality. “She is incredibly innocent, she has got this very fair complexion, beautiful hair, and never really needs makeup,” the designer explains. “I wanted to give her [character] the same light, like she has got in the real life.”

Sheppard based Aurora’s dresses on late-medieval and Renaissance designs, choosing cotton, thin wools, and multiple layers to provide natural movement for the character as she flits through the forest.

In retrospect, Disney was sending some sartorial mixed messages about Sleeping Beauty in its eponymous 1959 animated film. In theory, Princess Aurora was cared for—and by extension, dressed by—a trio of eccentric fairies in the forest until the age of 16. But in reality, she was being costumed by Disney’s animation director Marc Davis, who gave the fairy tale teen a chiseled hourglass figure, nary any ounce of baby fat, and the chic style sensibility of Audrey Hepburn.

When it came to adapting Sleeping Beauty for modern audiences with Disney’s live-action retelling, Maleficent, though, Oscar-nominated costume designer Anna B. Sheppard was determined to create a more “down to earth” and natural Princess Aurora. For Elle Fanning, who plays Aurora and was only 14-years-old when she filmed the movie, this meant brainstorming age-appropriate and setting-appropriate designs. “I really walked away from that [animated] image [of Aurora] completely. I wanted something really girly and innocent and also closer to nature.” With those constraints, Aurora’s off-the-shoulder necklines in the original did not make much sense. In fact, Sheppard was so intent on maintaining Aurora’s modesty that she incorporated a conservative layer of chenille under Aurora’s costumes and insisted on sleeves so long that they almost covered her hands.

Instead of the hourglass silhouettes that Davis championed in the original, Sheppard strove for “very long, very fluid, and not sexy at all” shapes to Aurora’s costumes. The designs were not just rooted in chasteness though—Davis spent her pre-production time researching styles of the Renaissance and late-medieval period. Davis incorporated a variety of layers and organic textures (including cotton and thin wools that provided movement whenever the character walked or danced) to Aurora’s costumes, giving her a bohemian style that fits her eclectic upbringing. “When we meet Aurora she lives in the forest and her dresses are probably made by the crazy fairies that we see in the human form. They are very eccentric and full of character. At the same time, Elle has a personality full of light. She is incredibly innocent, she has got this very fair complexion, beautiful hair, and never really needs makeup. I wanted to give her [character] the same light, like she has got in the real life.”

The lightness and loose silhouettes are obvious contrasts to the dramatic look of Angelina Jolie’s character, Maleficent, who is decked out in ink-black leather, blood-red lips, razor-sharp cheekbone prosthetics, and that fantastically horned headpiece—edgy sartorial manifestations of her evil. Fanning, meanwhile, was dressed in organic designs reflective of her unadulterated spirit. “[For Aurora], I wanted to stay away from something that is too modern and too sexy. I didn’t want to create that impression that she is dressed up.” To that point, Sheppard chose to put Aurora in practical footwear—no stilettos for this Disney princess. “She wore all handmade shoes—little booties . . . in the forest, she wears a little ankle, flat boot with lacing up the side that is the same color as her dress.”

Although Aurora and Maleficent are spiritual opposites, Sheppard did link the two in terms of one costume piece. The first time teenage Aurora and Maleficent meet, Fanning’s character is wearing a hooded coat that is nearly a mirror image of the cape Maleficent wore the night she lost her wings and set forth on an evil, destructive path in life. When Maleficent first met Aurora, Sheppard wanted the villainess to briefly be reminded “of the younger, innocent fairy she once was”—not the mistress of all evil that she had become. “So its very similar coloring—of course, Angelina’s was more dramatic and bigger volume. But I wanted the hood because I think it also gives Aurora this little girl look.”

If there is one trademark princess accessory that Aurora is missing, it’s her own headpiece. Not to say that Sheppard did not try her darndest to get a natural variation of the princess tiara on the film’s heroine. “I wanted to put her in [crowns] that she makes herself, like a beautiful wreath. In the weather, it [was made of] berries, nuts, and twigs—and in the summer, it was made of silk, hand-painted flowers.” Alas, “costumes are always kind of by committee. Everyone liked the drawings but when it came time to put the wreathes and crowns on Elle, they thought it was too much. So it got lost in translation.” Asked what happened to her painstakingly-constructed princess crowns, Sheppard sadly guessed that they were laid to indefinite rest in some anonymous L.A. storage facility. Perhaps waiting to be woken up by a more appreciative production team or prince.